Odds & Ends

A man in West Yorkshire called 999—the British equivalent of 911—to report that his cat had eaten his bacon. The operator began by asking the caller, “What’s your emergency?” The unidentified man responded by saying, “Er ... me girlfriend has let the cat eat my bacon.” Over the course of the 90-second call, the man teld the operator he wanted to press charges against his girlfriend and the cat. “Sir, it’s not a criminal offense to let your cat eat your bacon,” explained the emergency operator. “And we don’t arrest cats.” The West Yorkshire Police made the catcall public in order to raise awareness of improper use of the 999 system. Tom Donahoe, who heads the West Yorkshire dispatch team, told the Yorkshire Evening Post his office receives nearly 1,000 emergency calls per day. Not all of those calls are proper emergencies, however. “Someone rang us at two in the morning to ask who the actor was that played Magnum P.I.,” Donahoe told the paper.

Dateline: Australia

An Australian man has filed a lawsuit against Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad after he allegedly suffered back injuries as a direct result of being seated next to an obese man. James Bassos’ lawsuit claims he was seated next to an overweight man on an October 2011 flight from Dubai to Sydney and was forced to “contort and twist” in his seat in order to avoid making physical contact with the other passenger. “After repeated requests of cabin crew, Mr. Bassos was given limited access to a crew seat but was still required to spend long stretches of time in a position which he claims caused a back injury and aggravated an existing back condition,” papers filed by Bassos’ lawyers state. Brisbane District Court Judge Fleur Kingham refused Etihad’s request to throw the case out, but did order a medical examination of Bassos, which is scheduled to take place in December. Etihad said in a public statement that the medical examination should bring the lawsuit to “an early conclusion” and that the airline “has a zero tolerance policy towards unruly behavior.”

Dateline: Poland

A drunk badger slept off a party binge after allegedly stealing more than a six-pack of beers from beach-goers in the seaside town of Rewal. The Dzika Ostoja animal shelter said in a Facebook post the female badger, dubbed Wandzia, was found on the beach surrounded by seven empty beer bottles. The bottles appeared to have been opened using the animal’s teeth. The shelter said two more empty beer bottles were found in the bushes near where Wandzia was found passed out. Wandzia spent two days sleeping off her intoxication and nursing a hangover. “Oh, youth. Oh, summer holidays,” read a caption on pictures of the recuperating badger. The animal was released back into the wild by the end of the week.

Dateline: Arizona

A 38-year-old man suspected of entering a home uninvited and threatening to kill residents with a rattlesnake apparently has a history of using non-human accomplices in his crimes. Nathaniel Buck Harrison of Oracle was arrested on July 23 after police say he entered a home and accused a man there of being a “rat” who sent a friend of his to prison. He then allegedly hit the 53-year-old victim over the head with a board and tried to get a live rattlesnake he brought with him to bite the man. The snake refused to cooperate, however, forcing Harrison to pull out a handgun and “fire a bullet into a speaker box close to the victim’s foot,” according to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. A 911 call in response to the gunshot brought deputies to the house. At first, Harrison refused to come out, but was eventually taken into custody. The gun was found hidden under a couch, and the snake was found slithering around the floor. Harrison was booked into jail under suspicion of endangerment, aggravated assault, criminal trespassing, disorderly conduct with a weapon, possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony offense, unlawful discharge of a firearm and threatening and intimidating. The snake was released into the wild. KNXV-15 in Phoenix talked to neighbors in Harrison’s mobile home park and found he has a penchant for using unusual weapons. Manager Suzi Riddell told reporters that Harrison “has gone to other people that live in here with big hornet’s nests and tried to throw them in their door. He gets a crazy idea and wants to go with it.”